purple

I think it pisses God off when you walk by the color purple in a field and don't notice it.
     Shug - The Color Purple

This is likely to be one of those vaguely cyclical and possibly overlong posts... but it needs to all come out my head... so... yeah...

I'll get to the above quote in a minute, but funnily it does relate to part of where I'm going to start (see... cyclical)...

We start, kinda, with me... see... and this is where I always stop... stop thinking, stop writing... stop...

Let's put it this way... I'm not the stereotypical "body beautiful gay boy"... never was. I almost kinda made it there back when I was about 22, but definitely not since.

But we really start with Miss Oprah (see, Oprah, Color Purple)... now it's no secret that I love Miss Oprah... but it's only kinda gotten worse since I haven't been working. I make sure to check out what the shows for the week are going to be so I know what days not to miss (I mark out the few regular shows I watch in the teevee guide, so that I don't forget anything at a casual glance... I'm lame and anal retentive about things... I know this!).

And today was another one of her shows about weight... that's probably another reason I love Oprah... we have some issues in common. There have been a couple of her other shows on weight, and the losing thereof, that kind of clicked with me, and this was no exception. It was a definite "a-hah moment"... but like I said, there have been those before, and I kind of go "yeah... a-hah moment... moving on...".

For some reason today was different. I don't know why really... but there was a woman on the show who was talking about how she lost the weight and she said "I just tied my shoes and took myself for a walk for an hour". And I though, hey, I could do that... it’s a beautiful day... I don't have anything to do for an hour...

So I did... I got out the radio headphones for my mobile phone, jacked myself in (so to speak) and I took myself for a walk around North Adelaide for (almost) an hour. And it was a good walk... I know it was all aerobic and crap because a) I was all tingly (in that good, you've done exercise, way) when I got back and b) I could feel my heart rate go up while I was walking.

Which brings me back to the quote at the beginning (see... cyclical)... when I saw The Color Purple the other week, plus all those extras on the second DVD, I was struck by something that Alice Walker (author of the original book) said... that there is a whole ton of purple in nature, but it doesn't get acknowledged as much as some of the other colours. I'm paraphrasing, obviously, but it's true... from the time I saw the DVD, I started looking around for all the purple in the natural world, and it's everywhere... I found at least three different plants with purple flowers before I even left my apartment building's garden.

And this walk was no different than any time I've been out in the last few weeks... I'm seeing purple all over the place, and it makes me smile. True, in North Adelaide it's dominated by lavender and wisteria... but there are also a whole bunch of other plants that I have no idea what they are... but purple is everywhere.

Looping back to Oprah and the whole weight issue again, I've decided that I'm going to:

• walk an hour a day, right after Miss Oprah (so, that's 3-4pm if you really, really want to stalk me)
• drink at least one 1.25 litre bottle of water a day
• not eat anything after 8:30pm (that rumbly tummy feeling is your friend... its also a killer, you kind of end up wanting to chew your own arm off... I've done it once before, and its not fun)

And we'll see... if I do it all again tomorrow then I'll keep on doing it, at least until the weather gets all stinkyhot. And hopefully I'm not sore in too many places tomorrow.

When I get my digital camera in a week or so I'll be able to take it with me and snap all kinda of pics around North Adelaide... I've been all over the neighbourhood before, but that was with my film camera, but with the digital I can go nuts and take a bunch of stuff I probably wouldn't normally. Including lots and lots of pictures of things that are purple!

(Note: I "backdated" this, because when I tried to post this, Blogger appeared to be down for "an hour" for maintenance... and that was several hours ago... but I was about to shutdown, had closed all my browser windows and thought I would just try one more time... and of course, THIS time it worked... Grrrr!)

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